


One of Our Own

by ruthc93



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Multi, Partners-in-Crime AU, follows canon up until after Ray gets rescued from HIVE, in which LoT never happens, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 21:25:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8594377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruthc93/pseuds/ruthc93
Summary: Cisco hadn’t meant to stay overnight at STAR Labs. But it wasn’t really his fault that he fell asleep at the Cortex after everyone else had left.
Okay, maybe it was his fault, but as it turned out, ultimately it was for the better.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Or, an sorta-Partners-in-Crime AU, where Legends never happens and Ray finds his way to Central City while still legally dead. And then he ends up joining Len's crew.
> 
> I've had this idea for a while but never got around to writing it. Until now. Wanted to try something different this time haha.

Cisco hadn’t meant to stay overnight at STAR Labs. But it wasn’t really his fault that he fell asleep at the Cortex after everyone else had left.

Okay, maybe it was his fault, but as it turned out, ultimately it was for the better.

He jerked awake when his phone buzzed, and after a few seconds of flailing to remember where he was, Cisco clumsily pawed at his phone on the counter and finally got a good enough grip on it to look at the screen.

The first thing that popped out at him was the 2:43 am in the top right corner, which made him groan. Then he noticed the caller ID flashing a giant “PRIVATE NUMBER”, and he frowned before tapping the button beneath it to answer.

“Hello?” he asked warily.

_“Cisco.”_

He recognized the voice immediately. “Lisa! Hey! I’m- how did you get my number?”

Then he recognized the lack of the usual singsong-y tone to her voice, and immediately he frowned again, “Is something wrong? Are you okay?”

_“I’m fine, mostly. But Cisco, listen, we need your help,”_ Lisa answered him, and there was something desperate in her words, making him sit up straighter as he wiped the remaining drop of sleepiness out of his eyes. “Of course, what do you need?”

Then her words clicked. “Wait. Who’s ‘we’?”

There was a pause and some shuffling, and Cisco guessed that the phone was passed to another speaker. He was proven right when a new voice, all too familiar and coated with ice, echoed in his ear.

_“Ramon.”_

All of a sudden, Cisco was a lot more awake than he had ever been.

“Cold,” he managed to choke out. Maybe it had something to do with his kidnapping a year ago, or maybe Snart just had that effect on people, but Cisco knew that no matter how he felt about Lisa, Leonard Snart would always strike a certain level of fear in his heart. “What do you want?”

_“Are you at STAR Labs.”_

It sounded more like a statement than a question. Cisco nodded frantically before realizing the other man couldn’t see him, “I mean, yeah, yes, I’m here.”

_“Is Snow there.”_

Again, didn’t sound like a question. Cisco bit his lips before answering, “You mean Caitlin? No. It’s almost 3 am. Why would she be here?”

There was the entire topic of why _he_ was here that was left untouched.

_“Call her. We’ll be there in three minutes.”_

“Wait, what-” he didn’t get to finish his question as the other end of the line went dead.

Cisco spent a good minute staring at his phone in disbelief, then he cursed as he stood and made his way to the entrance of STAR Labs, hitting Caitlin’s speed dial on the way there and hoping she wouldn’t be mad about being woken up at this hour.

He was pacing back and forth at the door as the second attempt to reach Caitlin fell into the blank void of voicemail when a nondescript black car pulled up in front of him. He hit call again as he watched Lisa hop out of the shotgun seat and Snart get out of the driver’s seat. Lisa came towards him, while Snart made a beeline for the backseat door.

“Cisco, thank you so much for agreeing to this,” Lisa said as she took hold of his free hand with both of her own.

“Well, your brother didn’t exactly give me much of a choice,” he muttered in response, trying to see what Snart was trying to take out from the back, which wasn’t easy, as Snart was obscuring his view almost entirely. But then Snart shifted and stepped back, pulling something with him, and Cisco felt his mouth go dry when he realized what it was.

Or rather, _who_.

“Ray?” he whispered, and indeed, out of the car, leaning heavily against Snart, was none other than Ray Palmer, who, if he recalled correctly, was supposed to be _dead_.

And he looked _terrible_. He was sweating profusely, and his face was locked in a gritted expression, as if he was in excruciating pain. Little noises of agonized whimpers and groans escaped his lips every now and then, and he seemed to be completely unaware of his surroundings otherwise.

Cisco’s eyes traveled from Ray’s face to Snart’s, and was more than shocked to see some hints of genuine fear and concern in the criminal’s usually unreadable eyes.

Then Snart’s eyes met with his, and Cisco was almost taken aback by the plea he could see in them.

“We have nowhere else to go,” Lisa said quietly next to him. “Can you help us?”

He spun towards her, then looked back at Snart and Ray again, still unsure exactly what he was seeing.

Then a new voice coming from his phone snapped him out of his stupor.

_“Francisco Ramon, you better have a good reason for waking me up at 2:50 in the morning, or so help me you are going to regret this phone call when I get to STAR Labs tomorrow.”_

Cisco swallowed, then he motioned the others into STAR Labs as he answered, “Cait, I’m sorry, but you need to come to STAR Labs, right now. You’re not gonna believe this, and we need your help.”

Ten minutes later, he had the Snarts bring Ray to the infirmary to lay him down on one of the beds, and he set up the medical equipment to the best of his abilities. The heart monitor immediately showed signs of erratic heartbeat the instant Cisco hooked it up, and he gulped. He might not be an expert when it came to medicine, but he knew enough to be certain that Ray’s heart would give out eventually if it went on like this.

It tore at his own heart when Ray, delirious with pain, lashed out at him, the Snarts, and himself repeatedly, forcing Cisco to restrain his limbs to the futon.

Still Ray struggled, the whimpers of pain now occasionally rising to small cries or screams. A sheen of sweat covered every inch of visible skin as his whole body trembled, and the warm brown eyes from Cisco’s memories were glassy and unfocused, staring off into the far distance as if seeing something the others couldn’t.

Cisco ran a hand over his own mouth, taking in a shaky breath and letting it out in an equally unstable sigh. “What the hell happened to you, man?”

He hadn’t expected his quiet rhetoric to be answered, and almost jumped when Snart spoke up next to him, “He got injected with something. Might be some sort of poison, we’re not sure.”

Snart’s face was clouded dark, almost unreadable except for the clear concern in his eyes. And Cisco had a million more questions, ranging from “how is Ray still alive, I went to his _funeral_ ” to “Cold, are you okay, I’ve never seen you this emotional”, but he swallowed them back down his throat as Lisa leaned into him from the high chair next to him, resting her head on his shoulder and grabbing his hand tightly with worry.

It was another five minutes before Caitlin arrived at the scene. She walked in the door, paused, took in the sight in front of her, then took a deep breath before she slipped on her professional mask, walking up to Ray and looking over him and the displays on the screen.

She asked a few questions, which Snart and Lisa took turns answering, all to the point and exactly what she needed. Eventually it was just Caitlin and Snart doing the talking, while Cisco and Lisa watched from the edge of the room.

“You must have questions,” Lisa said as they watched Caitlin take a blood sample from the writhing Ray on the bed, with Snart holding his arm still.

Cisco let out a small, incredulous high pitched laugh at that, “Understatement of the _year_. And considering how this year has turned out, that’s a pretty big deal.”

There was a pause between them, as Caitlin turned away to examine the blood, while Ray let out another strangled scream through gritted teeth. Cisco noticed something flicker through Snart’s expression at that, and he found himself staring when Snart reached out and, _gently_ , pushed back a strand of stray hair out of Ray’s face.

“We found him by accident,” Lisa suddenly continued. “Caught, unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, in the crosshairs of one of our heists. And we were surprised. After all, Ray Palmer was supposed to be dead.”

Cisco nodded. “I went to his funeral,” he said quietly.

“Well, that’s what most people thought, apparently. But then he told us his story, how he got shrunk and then held captive by an evil organization called HIVE.”

“The one in Star City?”

“Yup,” Lisa answered, popping the “p” at the end of the word. “Green Arrow and his friends rescued him, but Ray wanted to stay legally dead, for his own reasons. He still hadn’t told us what they are.”

A pause. “Well. Hadn’t told _me_. Then we just sort of…adopted him. He’s been a great help on our heists, making us even harder to be found out.”

Cisco nodded along as he listened, then he blinked. “Wait. All those robberies with no trace of evidence in the past few months - those were _you_?”

Lisa just gave him a small smile and a wink.

“I have something,” Caitlin said as she looked up from the microscope, drawing the attention of the entire room. “This drug in his blood, it’s messing with his pain receptors, making his brain believe he’s in pain. I’ve seen something similar before. It’s a lot like Vertigo, but stronger, and without the hallucinogens from the mushrooms.”

“It’s an earlier version, from back in 2012,” Snart said almost immediately, and as Caitlin and Cisco stared at him, he scowled. “It was in the market. I did my research.”

The brief silence was abruptly interrupted as another tortured yell came from the bed, reminding everyone of the situation at hand.

“Alright,” Caitlin nodded stiffly, “If this was on the streets before, the CCPD or the SCPD would have records of it. It’ll save us the time from running an actual diagnosis now. Cisco?”

“On it,” Cisco replied as he moved to the nearest computer to hack into the database of both police departments. A minute later he had located the forensics files on the earliest version of Vertigo, in its purest form.

Caitlin took over, going over the formula and chemical compounds of the drug, and quickly jotted down notes. After a few seconds of rapid writing, she gave a curt nod. “Okay. I’ll be able to reverse engineer a counter-drug with this. It’ll take at least another twenty minutes, though. Watch Ray for me and inform me if his condition changes, alright?”

Cisco nodded and Lisa gave her a double thumbs up as the biochemist left the infirmary for the lab. Out of the corner of his eye, Cisco saw Snart give one controlled nod as well, before turning back to the suffering man on the bed.

Ray’s chest heaved up and down rapidly, straining to draw in oxygen for his body that wasn’t actually in pain. His hands, cuffed to the bed with padded restraints, were curled tightly into fists. Every now and then his arms would jerk, pulling against his bonds, as he let out cries and moans of pain. Cisco unconsciously wrapped his arms around himself. Just watching Ray like this was making him sick.

Lisa found her place back at his side, leaning her head on his shoulder again, and Cisco instinctively drew an arm over her shoulders and held her close.

They watched silently as Snart pulled up a chair next to the bed and sat down on it. His fingers clasped together as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, and all the while he never took his eyes off of Ray.

There were about a million other questions that Cisco had for that.

“He took the blow for Lenny,” Lisa suddenly spoke up after a few minutes of tense waiting, her voice barely above a whisper, “usually Ray stayed in the safehouse, offering us technical backup and help from there. But tonight we wanted to try something different.”

Cisco listened intently, knowing that this was one of the ways Lisa had of coping. To talk about what had happened.

“None of us saw the syringe. None of us even saw the bastard move. But Ray did. Somehow. Maybe he had a knack for seeing danger. Maybe it was because the target was _Lenny_. I don’t know,” she continued. Cisco began rubbing circles into her back, almost completely out of reflex. When he did realize what he was doing, he saw no point in stopping.

There was another moment of silence, only punctuated by the irregular beeping of the heart monitor. Then, very quietly, Lisa spoke, “We killed him. All of us. Lenny, Mick, me. He never should have hurt Ray. He never should have tried to hurt Lenny.”

Her voice was hard, without regret, and Cisco swallowed. As if sensing his uneasiness, Lisa looked up at him with a pointed look. “He hurt one of our own,” she said simply, as if that explained everything.

And maybe it did. And in a way, Cisco understood. He also knew that there was nothing he could say that would change their minds.

They fell back into silence again, and the uneasy wait for Caitlin’s return continued.

After what felt like an eternity, Caitlin finally stormed into the room again and headed straight for Ray.

“I've got the counter-drug. This will cancel out the original Vertigo in his system, but this may lead to nausea and a very slight chance of internal bleeding,” she explained as she readied the formula for injection. As she finished the last sentence she paused, looking up at Snart as a silent request for his approval.

Snart’s eyes darted from the syringe in Caitlin’s hands to Ray on the bed, who only looked ever the worse for wear.

Snart nodded. “Do it.”

Caitlin stepped forward swiftly and instructed Snart to hold Ray’s arm still, and a few seconds later she stepped back with an empty syringe, and the whole room waited to see the result with bated breath.

There was a beat of silence.

Then Ray’s body seized as he screwed his eyes shut and let out a gut wrenching _scream_ , and the insistent beeping of the heart monitor spiked. Cisco tightened his arm around Lisa as her grip on his hand became almost bone-crushing. Snart started forward instantly, only to be stopped by Caitlin with her hand on his arm.

Snart whipped his head towards her with a snarl, demanding an answer, but Caitlin kept her eyes on Ray, and only offered him a quiet, “It's working. Let it work.”

Eventually, after a second that seemed to stretch on forever, the scream trailed off into a huff of breath. The frantic beeps from the machines slowed down considerably, and Ray was left panting heavily. But his body visibly relaxed, and his hands fell limp at his sides as his breathing evened out.

The beeps slowed to an almost sluggish rate.

Then Ray opened his eyes by a tiny crack, and they found the person closest to him.

“Len?” he said weakly.

Cisco let out a breath that he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding, at the same time as Snart let out a sigh and moved forward to brush sweat drenched hair out of Ray’s face. Then his hand moved down to cup his cheek, and Ray leaned tiredly into the touch.

“I’m here, Raymond.”

Lisa relaxed and all but leaned her weight completely into Cisco, while Caitlin smiled and gently patted Ray on the chest.

“Good to have you back, Ray,” she said. Ray lolled his head to the side to focus on her, and a small confused smile graced his own lips. “Caitlin?” Then his eyes moved further, to the other two occupants of the room. “Cisco?”

“She saved your life, man,” Cisco couldn’t help but laugh, “you really know how to make an entrance. Back from the dead, no less.”

Ray blinked owlishly at that, the confused smile still on his face. He looked like he was about to say something, but Snart quietly placed a hand on his forehead, causing the man to turn to look at him instead.

“Rest, Boy Scout. We’ll do the explaining.”

Ray’s smile grew a bit wider despite his apparent exhaustion, but nevertheless his closed his eyes. Seconds later he was fast asleep.

There was a stretch of silence as they watched him sleep. Then Caitlin cleared her throat, drawing the attention of the other three, and smiled. Brightly.

Too brightly, Cisco thought with a gulp.

“Well, now that Ray has stabilized,” she said, “will all of you please kindly explain to me _what the hell is going on_?”

* * *

All things considered, the night didn’t go too bad. Snart and Lisa filled Caitlin in on why Ray was apparently not dead, and Cisco busied himself preparing coffee for everyone, since none of them showed any intent on leaving. Snart refused to leave Ray’s side, and Lisa refused to leave without either of them. Caitlin stayed under her obligation as the medic, and at this point Cisco felt wrong if he was the only one to abandon them for his bed at home.

It was three hours later when Cisco started awake again, this time on the floor leaning against a wall in the infirmary. Lisa was curled up next to him, her head seemingly having found a permanent perch on his shoulder, still fast asleep.

Caitlin was nowhere in sight, but Cisco knew she couldn’t have gone far, not when a patient was still under her care.

Then he realized what, exactly, woke him up.

“Of all the stupid things I’ve seen you do, this one takes the cake,” someone said. It took a few seconds for Cisco to realize that it was _Snart_ , who was still seated next to the bed with his back towards him.

Huh. It was weird hearing him talk without his usual drawl.

“I don’t regret it,” Ray’s voice answered hoarsely from the bed. From his angle on the floor, Cisco could only make out the outline of his face, no doubt propped up by the pillow beneath his head.

“Of course you don’t,” Snart muttered darkly, but there was no real anger behind his words.

“Len, you know I could never stand you getting hurt.” Ray’s hand moved into sight to reach for Snart’s. “I would take the pain a hundred times over if it meant you - or any of the others - didn’t have to.”

Snart took hold of Ray’s hand as soon as they touched, and then he slowly brought it up - he had uncuffed Ray, Cisco realized - to his mouth and planted a soft kiss on his knuckles.

Cisco’s eyes went wide as he suddenly felt like he was intruding, witnessing an intimate moment that he had no right to see, and he snapped his eyes shut and tried to bury his face in Lisa’s hair, determined to make himself fall asleep through sheer will if he had to.

“I know, Raymond,” he still heard Snart say, “doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

* * *

An hour later, everyone was awake and present. Cisco never managed to go back to sleep, but luckily for his conscience, Snart and Ray didn’t escalate things any further afterwards.

Somehow Lisa convinced Snart to leave Ray’s side and go get breakfast with her, and Caitlin, after doing one last check up on Ray and assessing him to be fit to leave, declared that she was going home for a shower. Cisco and Ray waved good bye at both parties, and soon they were left alone.

The silence between them stretched on into the awkward zone, during which Cisco left and came back with a bag of Red Vines and shared some with Ray, before he finally mustered the courage to ask.

“So,” he said, turning to the man who was now sitting on the edge of the bed, “you and Cold, huh?”

Ray actually _laughed_. “Yeah, well, Len is amazing, once you get to know him.”

“I’m sure,” he said dryly as he chewed on his string of red licorice. Ray gave him a look. “You’re one to talk. What about you and Lisa?”

“Lisa’s different!” he said indignantly.

Ray smiled. “But you’re not denying it.”

Cisco opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Finally he sighed and nodded, begrudgingly admitting defeat. He couldn’t say he didn’t feel anything for Lisa, that’s for sure. Suddenly he let out a laugh, earning him a curious look from Ray, “Look at us. How did we, upstanding citizens of law and justice, both manage to fall for members of the same criminal family? We should know better.”

“Hmm. Well, I don’t know about me being an upstanding citizen of anything. I’m dead. And I’ve been working with a criminal crew for a few months now.” Ray said easily, as if he was just telling Cisco what he had for dinner. Then he smiled fondly, “I, for one, am glad I didn’t know better.”

He turned towards Cisco fully. “Aren’t  you?”

Cisco blinked, and after a moment of contemplation found himself nodding in response despite himself. He tried to reason with his own emotions, but that was hard to do when just the thought of Lisa made him smile. He sighed again, and let himself smile back at Ray, “Yeah, I guess.”

Silence fell between them again, and this time it felt comfortable. Cisco was just about to ask Ray if he wanted coffee when the other man spoke up before him.

“Does this mean we’ll one day be brothers-in-law?”

Cisco choked on his Red Vines.

“ _Ray_!”

“Too soon?”

“You _think_?!”

“Haha, sorry.”

“No, you definitely are _not_.”

“Red is a nice shade on you, by the way.”

“No thanks to you!”

If Ray was going to point out through his laughter that Cisco was smiling, he could always pretend he didn’t hear him.

**_The End_ **

**Author's Note:**

> It was interesting writing from Cisco's POV, haha. It's also the first time I've written Cisco or Caitlin, so I hope I did them justice. QwQ
> 
> Also I just. Love platonic Ray+Cisco a lot.


End file.
